1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for laying out an image in a one-page image while cutting out a part of the image.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image layout apparatus is generally used to layout a plurality of image parts on a one-page image. Each image part represents an image laid out as one part. The image parts include picture (photograph) image parts expressed by bit map data and linework image parts (such as characters and rules) expressed by run length data.
Each image part may be used wholly in some case and partly in others. When only a portion of an image part is required, a cutout mask is generally used for masking a non-required image area.
In the field of prepress process, it is required to specify a contour of a cutout mask with a high degree of accuracy in order to obtain a highly precise one-page image. In a conventional procedure, cutout masks of the respective image parts are created with a dedicated image cutout device before the image parts are laid out with the image layout apparatus.
It is sometimes required to add or modify the cutout masks according to the layout of the image parts on a one-page image. In such a case, the conventional procedure separately creates additional cutout masks or modifies the existing cutout masks with the dedicated image cutout device and then transfers the cutout masks thus obtained to the image layout apparatus. The addition or modification of cutout masks is rather time and labor consuming. The conventional technique also has a difficulty in creating cutout masks suitable for the layout condition.